The end of Chapter three

I have been dreading to write this post, because it means that this wonderful adventure is over for my part. As I´m writing this post I´m home in Norway and Nina is in Nepal with the gorgeous Marit ❤

Our second visit to Colombo was so much better than our first visit to this large and hot city. We stayed at a really nice hotel and it was good to have some luxury on the end of this journey. Maybe especially for Nina who now will spend 10 days trekking in Nepal. After the hideous car trip to Colombo we both needed a shower and drinks. We had booked dinner for 19.00 at the hotel restaurant, but when we saw all the food we had ordered as snacks we had to cancel dinner 🙂 We enjoyed the wonderful food, drinks, company and view for a few hours, and then a crazy thunderstorm struck! It was really cool sitting in our room on the 25th floor with the huge panorama windows looking at the rain and the lightning.

After enjoying a super breakfast buffet we were going shopping and doing some preparations for Nepal. The shopping was hot and successful 🙂 We ended the shopping spree at the lovely Gallery Cafe with loads of souvenir shopping, a cold Lion and a dinner reservation for the night. The rest of the day was spent by the pool before dressing up and heading out to dinner. The last time in Colombo we also ate dinner at the Gallery Cafe, so needless to say, this is our definite favorite place in Colombo 🙂 It was a perfect last evening of a perfect trip!

Nina had to send home a package before leaving to Nepal, and that makes a funny story. After checking with the local post office, FedEx and DHL (which was closed) we had to go to the central post office. Being located 4 km away a tuk-tuk was necessary in this heat. Arriving at the post office we first entered one of the desks, and we were quickly referred to the desk next by. The clerk told us that Nina needs to send this in two different packages because of the weight, and is referred to another desk to buy the box the package should be sent in. This guy told us we could buy the box with him, but we should go to the building next by to send the package – then it could be sent as one package instead of two. So we did as we were told, and went to the building nearby 🙂 After filling out three forms, running to an ATM to get cash, walking three meters to the Customs desk, walking three meters back to the original desk the package could be sent! It only took like one hour 🙂 As we have seen in many stores in Sri Lanka, there are always a lot of people working in the stores. But it seems, for us at leas, as one person has only one responsibility. This means a lot of people is just sitting around, waiting for that one customer that needs a passport photo, or clear a package for custom. Not as efficient, but at least a lot of people have jobs.

The rest of the day was spent by the pool and on a failed tourist sightseeing mission. Sometimes you just have to face your limits, and take a tuk-tuk back to the air conditioned hotel 🙂

The car ride to the airport was of the quiet kind – both dreading what´s next. The «farewell, so long» on the airport was of the tear wet and sobbing kind. We have had such a wonderful time together. We have created many new memories that we will share, reminisce and laugh about for a lifetime ahead. I´m so glad I got to experience this wonderful  country with my wonderful Nina ❤

Udawalawe & Ella

Pictures here 🙂 There are a lot and I didn`t have time to make a lot of comments on them 🙂

So, after hanging out at the sandy and wavy beaches of Sri Lanka for the better part of two weeks, it was time to see what else this beautiful country could offer. We had set our mind on going on a safari in one of the many parks around the island, and the choice fell on Udawalawe in the end. An hour and a half from Tangalle, we arrived in Elephant Trails, a beautiful hotel close to the national park.  There wasn`t really much to do there than the safari, and we came too late for that the first day. So we were again confined to the pool. Shame man 🙂 In all honesty, it is too hot to do anything unless it`s early morning or late afternoon, so even though it sounds extremely lazy just lying at the pool, that’s the reality in a hot country 🙂

But, we went for a walk after we had finished being overheated. However, walking down a high way when they drive as crazy as they do isn`t really our idea of fun. So we turned around rather quickly. That night after dinner we were so excited about going on a safari the next day, so we watched the Lion King and we both felt like we were in Africa. Even though Nansy have never been in Africa 🙂

Our safari started at 6 am, so we were up at the break of dawn and half asleep went down to our jeep. We headed to the park a short 10 min drive from the hotel.  The place was loaded with other jeeps and tourists, which kinda spoiled the moment a bit. I might have been spoiled on my safari in Zim, but still. Luckily we had very good driver, and throughout our drive he managed to stay clear of the rest of the cars. For the drive we got to see a lot of peacocks, buffalos and a lot of different birds. Peacock sounds are now my new favorite bush sound, it is sooo beautiful ❤  And then there were the highlights of the tour, crocodiles and close ups with elephants! 😀 In the beginning we passed a mother and her kid, and through the rest of the tour saw some more in the distance. But the best of the day was the bull (male elephant)  we met close to the water hole, our driver stopped the car and he slowly walked up to the jeep. After some very scary stories about bulls from Zim, I was close to wetting my shorts. He came up and put his trunk in to the driver`s window, and then he finally backed up. But we were still close, but the good close and not scary anymore 🙂  We were extremely happy with the safari, and I hope I`ll get the chance to do another one when I`m back in Zim, safari is da shit 😀

We finished the safari early and stayed at the hotel for the rest of the hot part of the day. Then we figured we should go and see some of the city, and again there was nothing to see. So I guess Sri Lanka doesn`t do cities the way we do home. After spending the day doing nothing we regretted not moving on after the safari. Coma state can get to you, and we were a bit restless. But there was nothing we could do but to wait until the next morning. Our driver picked us up after lunch, and we started the three hour ride to Ella. After about two hours we stopped at Buduruvagala, and ancient Buddhist temple. It was so gorgeous and magnificent to be there. The statues are carved right in to the mountain and dates back to the 10^th century. The names literally means “the rocks of Buddhist Sculptures”.

After stopping here we started the climb up to Ella. And man. If I`d had known we were driving that crazy road all the way up, I`m not sure I would have done it. Zikk zakk narrow roads all the way up, traffic coming down, no fence on the side, I was SO scared. I`m such a wuss when it comes to heights, it was just horrible. In the end though, so worth it. Ella is breathtaking. Beautiful mountains, green hills, tea plantations, fields and jungle, I`m amazed that there can be such a place! Sri Lanka just went very high up on the list of most beautiful places visited. The temperature here is better, warm at day and cool at night and morning.  So, after arriving and checking in at out hotel, we went on a hike to Little Adams Peack, 2 km from where we stayed. Walking through endless tea plantations and up the hill with a never ending view was just so amazing. And very good for the body after coma state 🙂 We treated ourselves to a beer and enjoyed the view from our balcony when we got down again, listening to the sounds of the peacocks in the distance 🙂 After having THE BEST curry for dinner we crash in our beds and fell asleep instantly.

Next morning we had arranged a guide to take us to Ella Rock, which we could see from our balcony. We walked from our hotel to the start of the mountain along the railways while the train was passing us. Our guide was awesome, he spoke very good English and new a lot about Sri Lanka and also the war. So while hiking we were told a lot of history and fact about the country we didn`t know. Like I said before, the language barrier have made some of the communication difficult, so it was nice to have someone to talk to 🙂 The hike itself was so nice, walking through tea plantations, pine forest, grass as tall as us and exhausting hills. The view is spectacular and impossible to catch on film so you might not get how amazing it was. But WOW.

Nansy had booked a massage after the hike, so while she was doing that I fell asleep in the hammock on our balcony. With a view straight up to Ella Rock, not bad at all. Later that day we went to buy some local tea and have a beer at one of the cafés viewing the hills. Ella is by far the best place we have been to in Sri Lanka, and our only regret is that we didn`t have more time here 🙂 Never go to Sri Lanka without visiting Ella!

We had been talking about taking the train back to Colombo from Ella, but it would take us 9 hours and only 6 by car. The manager at the hotel said we could take the train from Ella to Haputale which only takes about an hour and then our driver would be waiting for us there with our luggage. So that was an option we were very happy with and looking forward to. First off: Train. We were first worried that we might not have enough space to see anything, cuz there were a lot of tourists taking the train as well. But we found two good spots and waited for the journey to begin. It stared out so good with a view of Ella. Apparently the Chinese group in our carriage thought the same and were screaming, and I mean screaming, in excitement all the way from Ella to Haputale. They were running back and forth and hanging out the doors and windows and going absolutely crazy! So that ruined parts of that journey.
Second: 6 hour drive to Colombo. Oh. My. God. The worst and most scary road trip EVER! I mean, they can`t freaking drive down here, I`m sorry :O In the beginning it was fine, but as the traffic got heavier we were just hoping to make it to Colombo in one piece. They are always in a hurry, trying to drive passed cars when there is obviously no room or even a clear road ahead, a two lane road turns into a 5 lane road and so on. And also, no air con. And 33 degrees. But we made it, and are now enjoying Colombo 🙂

Tomorrow Nansy is going back home, 😦 , and I`m heading for Nepal to meet Marit and trek for the next two weeks J I don`t think I`ll bring my computer up in the mountains so the next post from me will be when I`m back from trekking in Kathmandu or in Bali. Nansy will fill you in on what we have been doing in Colombo 🙂

 

 

 

Mirissa & Tangalle

Pictures here 🙂

So, after the surfing it was time for us to be on our own and meet the real Sri Lanka. It started out really good, with a tuk-tuk ride from the camp to Mirissa with our entire luggage. Best way to travel! 🙂 Our hotel in Mirissa gave us a lovely welcome in the form of a huge cockroach crawling around on the floor. Thanks.  We went down to the beach and just had a beer at one of the beach shacks, and spent the rest of that day just relaxing on the beach, figured we deserved that after a week of hard surfing 😉

The next morning we had booked a whale watching tour, and Emelie from the surf camp came to join us. Sri Lanka has a lot of blue whales right outside the coast, and it attracts at lot of tourists. If you ever go, be sure to check the company you go with. A lot of them go too close to the whales to please the tourists. Be sure to choose one who will be respectful of the sea and it`s animals.
So at 6.30 am we were picked up, and headed for the harbor. At 7 am we went out on a huge boat, with a lot of other people. The crew offered some pills for sea sickness, and almost everybody took one. I don`t get sick out on the sea, so I passed. And so glad I did, just as we left shore everybody who had taken one fell asleep :O Nansy later told me it`s common, but it just felt a little bit creepy. Anyway, after about an hour out our captain spotted the first whale of the day 😀 It was kinda far off, so we only saw it in the distance when it came up for air. But another one came up even closer, and this one was close enough for us to see how huge these animals are! It`s seriously one of (I know I`ve said it before) best experiences ever! I love love love love whales ❤ And so we kept on driving around and looking for more, and in total we saw three near and three in the distance. And we were lucky, they hadn`t spotted any over the last week! J And as if it wasn`t good enough, all of a sudden a HUGE flock of dolphins came jumping close to the boat!! I mean, DOLPHINS!! I bet there were like 20 – 30 jumping around, and we followed them around and around, and we saw them all over. SUPER SWEET ❤ At the end we also came across some turtles making sweet love in the waves of the ocean, it could not have been better 🙂  We were out on the ocean for 2 ½ hours before heading back. Again, they all fell asleep around me. Creepy.
We spent the rest of the day on the beach with Emelie before heading back to the hotel and packing up our stuff.

Next morning we were picked up at the hotel and drove to Tangalle. Nansy had done most of the planning for Sri Lanka (thank you for leaving me off the hook for a couple of weeks) , and she has done a fantastic job! 🙂 Tangalle offers nice beaches and a relaxing atmosphere, and we have been in a coma for the last four days. We had seen and read some reviews of the hotel we are staying at, saying it was the best in the area. And it was fantastic! Our room was cozy and we had a porch and the whole hotel surroundings was just amazing. We called it The Garden of Eden, mixed together with the infinity pool, the garden with the peacocks, squirrels, birds, cows and other unidentified animals it was just heaven.  The beaches around the area are carzy wild with heavy waves and so we only went to the beach one day. It was a nice beach and all, but swimming became almost impossible and it`s too hot not to. So we went back to the pool 🙂
We went down to town one of the days, but there wasn`t really anything to see.  Sri Lanka is still trying to recover from nearly 25 years of war, and you can tell it`s a poor country. We have seen a lot of the country driving from place to place now, and there are huge contrasts in the infrastructure. On the one hand you have modern houses and shops, on the other you have shacks with only thin paper walls that people live in. Tourism is positive for the country in boosting the economy, I just hope that it`s not Thailand in a few years. Sri Lanka is wild and amazing, and I hope it stays  like this for a long time 🙂  Most local people we have met speak “normal English” as they say,  but it`s surprisingly hard to communicate sometimes. It`s sometimes as India, or more like a light version of the India I experienced. The traffic is as crazy as India, keeping to your side of the road is obviously impossible. Lights and mirrors on cars have no function, they rather user the horn. A hunk can mean the following: “Move, Traffic is coming, I`m about to pass you, Pedestrians beware” and sometimes they just hunk for no apparent reason.
Bus drivers are the worst drivers. They earn money based on the number of passengers and so they are always in a hurry to get to the next bus stop. They drive hella crazy and we are never getting on a local bus.
Everybody you meet asks the following questions: “Where are you from? How many days you in Sri Lanka? Where you been before (and then the place you met the person in) and last but not least: You have hotel? “People are generally sweet, we haven`t experienced anything scary or unpleasant, except from a few comments here and there. But then we are so damn cute, who can blame them? 🙂
We have moved from Tangalle and the beaches and are now inland. Stay tuned for Udawalawe and Ella 🙂

Surfs up!

Pictures here 🙂

A week goes crazy fast when you have fun! We`ve been in Ahangama since last Monday and yesterday we moved on. The surfing have been so much fun, and we finally understand why people love it so much 🙂

Starting where Nansy ended: On our third day of surfing we were ready to try to start turning after catching a wave. Our instructor, Ranjit, said our group was really good and that’s why we could start turning so early. It`s easy being good when you have an instructor like Ranjit. He doesn`t know a lot of English, but he knows enough for you to do what you`re told:
Ranjit: “ ARMS UP!!! Why u no arms up?! LOOK BEACH! Why u no look beach?! U SLEEP?? Why u sleep?! MORE PRESURE LEGS!! Why u fall off?! Stay on! Why u put foot like this?!” He of course said all those things whit the biggest smile in the world and laughing all the time 🙂  But still, we didn`t want to disappoint him, so we worked hard to put our arms up, look at the beach, not fall asleep and keeping our feet the correct way.
It might sound easy enough, but turning is so hard! There is so much to remember and we really are at the stage where we`re amazed that we can even get on the board. But we both managed to do some turns by control and not just luck! I had to quit a bit early this day, my face was so burned and it hurt so much with the saltwater that I couldn`t do a full session. Sucks, but my face is more important than surfing.

Like Nansy said we had a lay day on Friday and we could go on different tours around the area. We chose to go to the rainforest which we heard from other was amazing. It was a 3 hour drive from the camp to Sinharaja Forest Reserve. A heart-in-the-throat-crazy-reckless-drive that is. When we arrived we met our guide and got ready to head in the forest. I was freaked out about the leaches that everybody was talking about, and was going out of my mind! But our very friendly guide told me to rub salt on my shoes and then the leaches wouldn`t latch on. So I bought a pack of salt and rubbed it in as much as I could and was ready to head in 🙂

It was a beautiful walk through the forest and a very hot one. It was a bit cloudy which was perfect for the day. We walked around for three hours, stopping at the occasionally huge spiders, lizards and a small snake. The goal of the tour was a waterfall we could swim in, and it was so amazingly stunning there! Like nothing I have ever seen before, like straight out of a fairy tale 🙂 So we spent some time here swimming in fresh super cold water and it was so good to cool off a bit. We then walked back and had a fabulous late lunch before driving the heart-in-the-throat-crazy-reckless drive back. We arrived back at the camp around dinner time and then crashed to bed.

The next day started off with darks skies and rain and it wasn`t exactly the weather we were hoping for. But according to our instructor the conditions was perfect, so we just had to jump in and make the most of it.  Actually rain and clouds was perfect cuz we had a lot more energy that the other days had been drained by the sun. I had a really shitty day in the waves, nothing was going my way and the control I thought I had the other day was gone and I just fell off the board all the time. Can`t be awesome all the time now can it? The rest of the day was pretty shit as well, it rained the whole day and so we spent the day in bed reading and looking at the ceiling. Nansy and me had a date night this evening, much longed for quality time 🙂

Sunday was the last day surfing and it was the best day! We were finally good enough to catch the green waves, that is just before the waves breaks.  It was SO much fun, we had a lot more speed and we were further out so we could ride the waves longer. This is when we realized that surfing is AWESOME! Being on top of the wave is a little bit scary and we had some face plants, but it`s all part of the experience. It was a shame the day ended so fast and that it was the last day surfing, we would have wanted a least a couple of more days surfing green waves. But, our bodies had taken some pretty hard hits from this week of surfing. We both had a permanent t-shirt after these days, looks fabulous. Bruises in places we`ve never had bruises before, sand in all open areas of the body and just. Tired. So it was really time to do something else 🙂

Yesterday we checked out of the camp after lunch and headed to our new destination. Staying in the camp isn`t the best way to get to know the real Sri Lanka. Hanging out with people mostly from Scandinavia for week is something you can do back home anytime, so I`m really looking forward to try something new and experience more of the culture and people.

So, that’s been our week of surf`n fun in Ahangama. Stay tuned for updates from Mirissa and Tangalle the following week.

Chapter three, part one: Ahangama, Sri Lanka

And then, finally, we were in Sri Lanka! For you who don´t know me, I´m Nansy and will be joining Nina for three weeks before returning home to Norway.

I joined Nina in Colombo the morning after she arrived. As I stepped out of the car outside the hotel, Nina was there waiting for me. She jumped me before I could get out of the ca, and it was so good to finally see each other again. Finally we´re in Sri Lanka together!

After checking in to the room we took a trip outside to shop some necessities before traveling to the surf camp. The heat was almost unbearable! With 35 degrees, almost no wind and high humidity it was two soaking wet girls who arrived back at the hotel a few hours later. The only positive thing about our hotel room must be the AC; the hotel room was very dirty and had an awful smell. Luckily it was only for one night. In the afternoon we decided to give the heat another try, and we went outside. The temperature was much more comfortable now, and we walked to a place called Galle Face to watch the sunset. And it was amazing! It was a huge field with hundreds of Sri Lankan families enjoying a lazy Sunday evening. At the beach the kids were swimming, playing and throwing ball. Some of these probably will grow up to be great cricket players 🙂 After watching the sunset we drove tuk-tuk to a restaurant and had an amazing meal in beautiful surroundings. Needless to say, we fell easy asleep that night. At least for a couple of hours, before the mosquitos woke us up, buzzing in our ears making it hard to fall asleep again.

Nina, the super traveller, had arranged for a car to pick us up Monday morning and take us to Ahangama where the surf camp is. It was a smooth ride on the Southern Express Way. The SEX way (yes, it goes by that name :)) is a new highway, with four lanes and the quality is better than much of the Norwegian highways. The nature on our way south was so beautiful, lush and green everywhere.

At the surf camp the accomodation is perfect. We have our own private room with a big bed, closet for our clothes, a big bathroom and a balcony on the 2nd floor of the house. We arrived on Monday, which is «lay day». That means no surfing, and new surfers check in and old ones check out. On Tuesday we started our Level 1 lessons. The timing of our trip couldn’t have been better – the waves are on their biggest for years! If you didn´t catch the irony in that sentence – read again 🙂 Because of the big waves we went to another beach in Weligama to surf. And it was so much fun! Surfing is hard, but when your a beginner the learning curve is steep, so you pretty much feel like a surfer girl 🙂 Now, after to days of surfing, our bodies are so soar! Our arms, thighs, stomach and shoulders are soar and our knees hurt from hitting them on the surfboard or the sand as we fall of the board – yes, that happens occasionally. Tomorrow is another surf day before we have our first day off. Then we plan to go to the rainforest! I am so excited! Nina is a bit worried because of the blood leeches there, but she´ll be fine 🙂

Even though we´ve only been in Sri Lanka in 4 days, we´ve experienced a lot, and more is to come. There are no pictures for this post, but we´ll post some later.

Aayu-bowan!